by Bret Baier
If anyone doubted that the world was changing, the wall provided a wake-up call in 1989. Today, we remember the fall of the Berlin Wall as if it had been a spontaneous combustion. But it was an evolving scenario. Gorbachev had received reports of a growing restless energy sweeping the East German population that threatened to erupt.
Visiting East Germany in October, he urged its leaders to be courageous, to embrace perestroika. “Life punishes harshly anyone who is left behind in politics,” he warned them. Gorbachev was particularly frustrated with Erich Honecker, the general secretary of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany. Speaking to him, he said, was “like talking to a brick wall.” Honecker was immune to the forces of change. He lived in the past and would not even acknowledge the need for new initiatives. He had no interest in easing the tensions.
Weak, physically ill, and on the wrong side of history, Honecker was removed from office in mid-October and replaced by Egon Krenz. Krenz was hardly an improvement on Honecker, and from the standpoint of the leadership, the fall of the wall three weeks later was due to a blunder, not intention.
Attempting to stave off protests, the East German Politburo made some minor changes to travel restrictions in early November. But inexplicably, the official reading the statement to a televised audience on November 9 miscommunicated the extent of the change, leading people to believe that travel was open to every citizen, starting immediately. Almost instantly, thousands of people appeared in the streets, steadily growing in numbers, up to 2 million. The guards were unable to contain them, and there was just enough confusion about the official announcement that they weren’t sure they should try.
With pickaxes and hammers, and eventually cranes and bulldozers, the people of Berlin tore down the wall in an epic act of resistance. Crowds gathered in the night like a spontaneous eruption, young people pulling themselves up onto the flat top of the wall and raising their arms in victory. It was giddy and joyous and full of wonderment. Decades later, people who were young on that day still speak with awe of getting a call from a family member or friend: “Go to the wall, go to the wall”—and without question they had raced to see what was happening and then joined the throngs. In an instant, the terrible, oppressive barrier to freedom came apart in a breathtaking rebellion.
Hearing the news, Scowcroft rushed to the Oval Office, where he was joined by Fitzwater. No one was sure what was happening, but they turned on CNN in the study off the president’s office and watched.
“Do you want to make a statement?” Fitzwater asked.
“Why?” The president looked at him curiously.
“Why?” Fitzwater was surprised at the response. “This is an incredibly historic day,” he said. “People will want to know what it means.”
Bush was quiet for a moment. He knew that what people wanted was boastful American chest thumping—We won, you lost—and he just wasn’t going to feed into it. “Listen, Marlin,” he finally said, “I’m not going to dance on the Berlin Wall. The last thing I want to do is brag about winning the cold war, or bringing the wall down.”
Even so, Fitzwater convinced him that he had to make a statement. The public would expect it. Reluctantly, Bush agreed to speak to a press pool in the Oval Office. Later, Fitzwater might have regretted his insistence, because Bush’s performance before the press was lackluster.
“You don’t seem elated,” CBS correspondent Lesley Stahl said with surprise after he’d finished.
“I am not an emotional kind of guy,” he replied with a shrug.
“Well, how elated are you?”
“I’m very pleased.”
White House aides watched the performance with dismay. What was wrong with the president? Boy, some of them mumbled, Reagan would have knocked this moment out of the park. Fitzwater understood what Bush was trying to do—or, rather, what he was trying not to do—but it was agonizing.
Many Americans who tuned in to the news saw Reagan on the screen, speaking to Sam Donaldson from his office in Los Angeles. His face was serene, and his voice was quiet and confident. When Donaldson asked him if he had thought it would come so soon, the former president smiled. “Well, I didn’t know when it would come, but I’ll tell you, as an eternal optimist I believed with all my heart that it was in the future.”
When Donaldson, citing the “ash heap of history” speech, asked him if he felt vindicated, Reagan did not take the opportunity to boast about a win. “The people have seen that communism had its chance and it doesn’t work,” he said.
BAKER WOULD WHOLEHEARTEDLY DEFEND what he deemed Bush’s “prudence and perspicacity,” saying “He got a lot of grief from the media for not being more emotionally exuberant about the fact that the wall had come down. And he said, Wait a minute. We’re going to have to continue to deal with these people, and I’m not going to stick it in their eye. He was so wise on that, really. Everybody thought he was wrong, but he was right.”
Reagan had to be thinking about his own role in the drama, although he was no longer center stage. It was undeniable that Gorbachev had allowed it to happen; it had been his forceful challenge to East Berlin, his decision not to prevent it. “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” Reagan had cried, and in effect that was what happened. The feared crackdown from Moscow didn’t come. Indeed, Gorbachev had been telegraphing a hands-off policy toward Eastern Europe and, by extension, Germany. When the wall fell that night, Gorbachev wasn’t even awakened by his advisors. Once the East German leadership saw that Soviet tanks would not be rolling in the streets, it had no choice but to stand down. The next day, the Politburo did not even hold an emergency meeting.
Chernyaev wrote in his diary, “The Berlin Wall has collapsed. This entire era in the history of the socialist system is over.” But the reality was more nuanced. Yes, the wall had fallen, but East Germany was still under Communist control; that had not changed. And although many people were calling for German reunification, that wasn’t such a simple matter. Despite the agonies of the divided Germany, many Europeans, from both the east and the west, were uneasy about a united Germany, since their last experience of it had involved two wars of aggression. Now they wondered what was to prevent a reunited Germany from abusing its strength. In their superb book on the end of the Cold War, At the Highest Levels: The Inside Story of the End of the Cold War, historian Michael Beschloss and foreign policy analyst Strobe Talbot painted a picture of the dread that was lurking in European halls of power: “Twice in the twentieth century, German militarism and expansionism had plunged the world into war. Russians, Poles, and other neighbors of Germany were not eager to test the proposition that 1914 and 1939 were aberrations; nor were the British, French, and other peoples who had suffered directly at German hands.” For his part, Gorbachev thought it was important for Germany to remain part of the Warsaw Pact, an ally of the Soviet Union. His view was not just doctrinal but an economic necessity as the union shrank. The antipathy to a unified Germany was also personal for him, as it was for many East Bloc nations. They, too, had suffered from the aggression of Germany. Visiting a Soviet POW cemetery in Germany earlier in the year, where hundreds of thousands of people had perished during World War II, Raisa had made an uncharacteristically emotional statement: “Decades have passed, but even today, there is no Soviet family that does not mourn relatives who met a tragic, untimely death in those terrible years.” So the question of German reunification was far from being settled, even as bulldozers cleared away the detritus of the fallen wall.
Meanwhile, Bush was taking heat in the media and from Democrats about being too timid in foreign relations. Everyone wanted to know why he and Gorbachev had not yet had a summit. People just didn’t understand. Gates said, “I think both Brent and I believed, and I think maybe the president believed, that the Reagan administration had gotten out ahead of itself in the last six or eight months of 1988 in dealing with the Soviet Union, that their aspirations had outrun reality and had outrun the capacity of the government to absorb and deal with what they
were trying to do. In particular, Bush wanted to see if Gorbachev’s actions would match his words before the UN.”
Unbeknown to all but a handful of people, Bush had reached out to Gorbachev at the end of the summer of 1989, proposing an informal summit that December, at a removed location out of the spotlight. The two men had decided to keep the meeting a secret, Bush joking that they both knew how to keep secrets. Bush had told only Baker, Scowcroft, and Fitzwater that there would be a summit, although the word prematurely leaked out that the leaders would meet on the Mediterranean island of Malta in December. Notably, it was mere weeks after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
As a former navy man, Bush enjoyed the setting of the talks, to be held on two ships, one American, one Soviet, side by side in the harbor. Each leader would stay on his own ship, and meetings would alternate between the two. For him, the American ship, the USS Belknap, had a sentimental appeal. But according to Fitzwater, Gorbachev wasn’t fond of warships, with their tight quarters and Spartan accommodations. In addition to the Slava, which was barely used, he brought the Maxim Gorky, a Soviet cruise ship. “The Gorky was a long way from battleship gray,” Fitzwater recalled. “It had red carpets throughout, floor-to-ceiling mirrors in most rooms and hallways, and gold chandeliers in the dining and meeting areas.”
On his way to Malta, Gorbachev met with Pope John Paul II, the first visit of a Soviet head of state to the Vatican. Gorbachev wanted to signal his openness toward more religious freedom in the Soviet Union and his interest in establishing ties with the Vatican. The pope, whose birth name was Karol Wojtyła, had been raised in Poland, and thus had a natural affinity for the Poles’ struggles under communism. Having suffered under Nazi oppression as a young man and then under Soviet domination after the war, which had made the practice of his faith a dangerous act, he knew firsthand the peril many people in his homeland and elsewhere were facing in their quest for religious freedom. He used the pulpit of his papacy to support Solidarity in Poland and advocate for human rights around the world. He and Reagan had established common cause on that issue.
Reagan had been an admirer of the pope before he took office, but what had really cemented their relationship was their “dubious distinction” (Reagan’s words) of suffering assassination attempts only six weeks apart in 1981. When they met for the first time the following June, they spoke about their common experience, marveling at their miraculous survival. They agreed that they’d both been spared in order to do God’s will in the world, their mission the fall of communism and the demise of the Soviet Union. In a public statement after their meeting, the pope underscored the unique American role in the quest for peace: “With faith in God and belief in universal human solidarity may America step forward in this crucial moment in history to consolidate her rightful place at the service of world peace. . . . My final prayer is this: that God will bless America so that she may increasingly become and truly be and long remain one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”
Those two men of faith, a Catholic and a Protestant, were deeply joined in their higher purpose. In the coming years they spoke often about the persecution and even martyrdom of people of all faiths under Soviet rule. After his presidency, Reagan once welcomed Polish visitors to his office in California. Pointing to a picture of the pope on the wall, he said, “He is my best friend.”
Gorbachev had always been testy on the subject of religious freedom, which Reagan consistently pressed. He felt that people did not appreciate how far the Soviet Union had come on the matter.
There were small signs that the atheistic shield was cracking. In September, Baker and Shevardnadze, meeting in Wyoming for negotiations, exchanged gifts. Baker gave Shevardnadze a pair of cowboy boots. Shevardnadze presented Baker with an enamel picture of Jesus preaching. “You see,” Shevardnadze said, “even we communists are changing our worldview.”
When Gorbachev arrived at the Vatican, the pope invited him to meet privately for a brief time. He spoke to Gorbachev in Russian, telling him he’d been practicing the language so they could talk directly. He made it clear to Gorbachev that his was a larger mission, a nonpolitical quest, telling him that although he criticized communism, he also criticized the vices of capitalism. And he pressed him, saying that religious freedom was at the heart of it all. But he said, “It would be wrong for someone to claim that changes in Europe and the world should follow the Western model. This goes against my deep convictions. Europe, as a participant in world history, should breathe with two lungs.”
Gorbachev replied, “This is a very appropriate image.” But he bristled a bit when the pope lectured him on religious freedom. “At one point President Reagan tried to teach me how to conduct matters in our country,” he said. “I told him that we would not be able to have a conversation like that. A conversation can only happen on the basis of realism and mutual respect. I told him: you are not a teacher and I am not a student. You are not a prosecutor and I am not a defendant. So, if we want to talk about politics, about how to change the world for the better, then we have to do it as equals. He understood this and we were able to do what we did.”
The conversation was polite and deferential, the pope saying little as Gorbachev defended his reforms, mentioning his efforts in Poland and inviting the pope to visit the USSR. Gorbachev left pleased with the meeting and the idea of opening official relations with the Vatican in the near future.
As the parties arrived in Malta, a storm was forecast, but they were able to meet on the first morning. “We are not here to upstage Gorbachev,” Bush had reminded his team when they landed in Malta. “Our problems are too serious for PR. We want to know how much change he can accommodate.”
Sitting down with Gorbachev on the Gorky, Bush said candidly, “There are people in the United States who accuse me of being too cautious. It is true, I am a cautious man, but I am not a coward, and my administration will seek to avoid doing anything that would damage your position in the world.”
Almost apologetic for his long months of silence—dubbed “the Bush pause”—he then picked up on the conversation from Governors Island, as if it had happened a week before, not a year before. “I agree completely with what you said in New York,” he told Gorbachev, stating that the world would be a better place if perestroika were a success. The Cold War had given way to an era of cooperation, but what that entailed was still sketchy.
When the discussion turned to Germany, Bush wanted Gorbachev to know that he was willing to proceed cautiously. “If our Democrats criticize my timidity, let them do it,” he said. “I do not intend to jump up on the wall because too much is at stake on this issue.”
Gorbachev laughed. “Well, jumping on the wall is not a good activity for a president.”
But as he had told the pope, he was growing frustrated by the regular references to “Western values.” Why are openness and democracy Western values? he asked with some bitterness. Had Germany been displaying “Western values” between 1937 and 1945? He sought his due for his hard labor pressing for reform. He felt they had moved beyond the point where he was on the “other” side.
“Why don’t we use the term ‘democratic values,’ ” Baker suggested, and Gorbachev was pleased with that.
Later that day, the gale descended on Malta with greater force than expected—a twenty-year storm, they called it. Sixty-mile-an-hour winds sent huge waves crashing against the Belknap, hammering it as the seasick Americans tried to hold on. The situation was less dire for the Soviets aboard the Gorky, which was moored at the dock. A formal dinner hosted by Gorbachev was planned on the Gorky, and Bush instructed the captain to find a way to get there. Again and again, the navy crew tried to steady the ship against a small dock that was placed alongside so the president and his team could depart. But the waves buffeted the dock as if it were a piece of cardboard, pulling it away. As his green-gilled staff looked on, Bush kept insisting that they were going to the dinner. At one point, Fitzwater recalled, “The president w
alked out to the edge of the ship, grabbed the cable handrail in that particular area, and exclaimed with great enthusiasm, ‘Let’s go!’ ” Everyone—except the president—was relieved when the captain said no.
With calmer waters the next day, they resumed meetings, discussing a second summit in Washington the following June, when they would hopefully reach agreement on a START treaty. The high point of the summit was the joint press conference, where Bush and Gorbachev beamed and kidded as if they were old buddies. They announced that they had entered an era of “enduring cooperation” leading to “lasting peace.” Barbara and Raisa were equally warm. As the teams mingled with reporters, chatting and shaking hands, many observers concluded that it was the moment the Cold War ended. Of course that designation had already been announced on Governors Island. But no matter; Reagan would have been heartened to see the scene, a fulfillment of all he’d done.
The June 1990 summit was very productive, with a robust trade agreement and commitments to reduce long-range nuclear missiles. The trade deal was immensely important to Gorbachev; he nearly begged the president to agree to it. He desperately needed a win back home, and Bush understood that. Shortly before the summit, Jack Matlock had sent a cable detailing Gorbachev’s problems at home, calling him “an embattled leader”:
THE SUCCESS OF GORBACHEV’S EFFORTS TO MODERNIZE SOVIET SOCIETY AND AT THE SAME TIME KEEP THE FEDERATION TOGETHER APPEARS INCREASINGLY PROBLEMATIC. DEMOCRATIZATION AND MARKET REFORMS ARE HERE EXAGGERATING REGIONAL, ETHNIC, AND CLASS TENSIONS AND THUS COMPLICATING THE FORGING OF THE NATIONAL CONSENSUS NEEDED FOR FURTHER REFORMS.
According to Matlock, Gorbachev was getting it from both sides—not only from the hard-liners resistant to change but from the “social forces his reforms have unleashed.”
The most difficult conversation of the summit involved Germany. With Germans clamoring for reunification and the freedom to join NATO, Gorbachev was on his heels. He pleaded with Bush to see it from the Soviet standpoint, to proceed more slowly and cautiously—to remember the past.
